Create Affinity maps from insights

I grouped my findings from the Survey and Interviews and created Affinity Map. The links below take you to my Affinity Map. You can clearly see how grouping and naming the groups of findings helped me visualize the features my audience really needed and desired. This exercise, in my opinion, was very helpful in bringing clarity to my solution.

Empathising with my personas.

I created empathy maps for each persona I had created from my insights. Empathy maps helped me connect the user behaviour with what they say and how they feel. Sometimes the users behaviour did not match what they did and how they felt. This exercise helped include the feelings into user needs. Addressing the user feelings along with their needs would make the solution address the problem better.

As the personas did not differ too much the empathy maps were also similar except for a few differences.

Parents of kids ages 5 and below chose activities for their kids where as the other category let the kids choose the activities they were interested in

Parents of kids age 5 and below were not very comfortable using commute options where the parents were not included

Apart from that the empathy map below depicts both the personas for the project

HMW statements.

When you know what the audience desires the answer to the  question of How Might We provide it to them provides you with the feature list!

The Questions:

“How might we help parents easily visualise their kids’ schedule with a combined capability to easily add, change activities/events with conflict indicators, flexible alert setting and intelligent housekeeping?”

“How might we help parents to explore new activities/events in the area [nearby or specified area]?”

“How might we help the parents contact their partner immediately when required and pass on the required information?”

“How might we create a support group for parents where they could share information about the events/activities their kids are going to; share reviews/ratings/other info; maintain older contacts?”

“How might we help parents gauge the engagement level of their kids and if it matches the goals they have set for the kids?”

“How might we create a support group for parents for car pools to various activities/events”

“How might we enable the parents to visualise the amounts spent on various activities over the years?”

“How might we help parents include and involve distant grand-parents in the activities/events their kids are participating in?”

The Answers:

§  Quick and combined view; conflict indicator; easy calendar setup/entry

§  Easy Entry/Discovery of activities

§  Flexible alert setting

§  Instant ping/buzz

§  Intelligent housekeeping

§  Car-Pool Support Group

§  Engagement level indicator

§  Parent Support Group/Parents Contacts/Parent Invites/Info sharing/Review sharing/Info Pinning

§  Budget View

§  Share/Invite Friends/Family

§  Services [Cabs, teachers, co-ordinators] - future scope

Laying out the site map.

The features identified were logically grouped into sections and a site map was created for the solution. The solution needed to have atleast 4 tabs – Calendars, Members, Activities, Chats/Discussions. The site map helped group the user flows as well. The site map and the user flows progressed in tandem and there were later some changes required to the site map once the user flows were elaborated on. More on user flows in the next section.

User Flows.

With 22 user flows including 5 RED Routes identified a good foundation was laid for the future design work. Each user flow would be a sequence of screens that would determine user interaction with the app to accomplish the task.

While creating the user flows I realised that I needed to add more tabs to my app. For example, in order to let the users add alerts without associating them with the activities I needed to give them an option to start adding alerts and view all their alerts. Similarly if the users added guests to the app they would not want to look through the entire House settings but will be interested only in the shared content like photos or accomplishments or discussions. So I decided to add another tab for a family journal which will be what the guests would see.

Then came user stories.

Creation of user stories is not intended to help the design process but is required by the developers. The user stories below were written to practice the skill and iron out any imperfections in the process.

Based off the user journeys I wrote the user stories for the project. 

• As a parent user, I should be able to setup the app for my family so that I can involve all the members in family activity planning and tracking

• As a parent user, I should be able to buzz a member with as less clicks as possible so that I can send a quick urgent communication out, when required

• As a parent user, I should be able to setup calendars for the family so that the family is aware of plans for everyone and plans their time accordingly

• As a parent user, I should be able to view conflict indications so that I do not double book any family member

• As a parent user, I should be able to view the calendar view for all the members so that I can use the information from the quick look to plan further

• As a parent user, I should be able to view list of all activities that my family is a part of so that I can keep track of the family activities

• As a parent user, I should be able to search for more activities so that I could avail any new activity, if required

• As a parent user, I should be able to view activities already enrolled to so that I can document progress and take decisions based on this info

• As a parent user, I should be able to review activities already enrolled to so that I can record my feedback for future and also help others looking for recon for the activity

• As a parent user, I should be add new activities to the app so that I could utilise the benefits of the app for all activities in the area

• As a parent user, I should be able to add alerts so that I can be prompted appropriately for every activity

• As a parent user, I should be able to buzz a member for an activity so that I can remind the member about important activities 

Hand-made sketches.

The handmade sketches for a few red routes shown below show the variations explored and process followed. 

Digitizing wireframes.

Digitalizing the finalised hand-made sketches yielded digital wireframes which were much easier to review and collaborate on. This exercise demonstrated the use of collaborative tools and digital wireframing which is a very essential skill in today’s times given the diverse nature of teams. Sketch and Figma were used for creating the digital wireframes.

Some examples of digital wireframes have been pasted below.

Mood Board.

One of the mood boards created for this project had an intention of making the user feel cheerful while performing tasks that used to be cumbersome and tedious before this. The other one intended to make the user feel in control of their and their kids lives. 

Style Guide.

The mood board chosen helped create a few variations for the style guide. Picking one style guide was necessary to move on to creating mock-ups, with an understanding that the style guide will need updates once the design for mock-ups starts taking shape. 

I used the inspiration from the mood board and created this style guide but I wanted a little more contrast between colors and so moved on to create another version of this style guide.

In this variation I chose a new accent colour and increased contrast between the lightest and the darkest shades. I also took help from Figma’s colour creator plug in to finalise these colours. 

Mock-ups.

Finally, the mock-ups! We all have been waiting for this. The app now has a look and feel. It sets a mood. 

Once I started creating the mock-ups I went right from dawn to dusk working on them. It is so interesting and consuming that you can go on and on. But limiting myself to the mood boards and the style guide helped me focus on the set design direction for the app. The user flows and wireframes created kept me grounded to the goals of the app. If these initial steps are skipped and you jump to the design step you are sure to get lost in the wonderful world of colours and possibilities. So ensure to follow the process flow before you start designing.. 

Prototype.

3 prototypes were made in Invision – one each for the tasks to be tested during usability testing. The videos of the prototype are included below with the tasks in the section for test. While creating a prototype I realized that some transition screens need to be designed to make the prototype flow smoothly. This helped bridge a lot of gaps in the screens designed before the design was presented to the users. 

Test.

Testing with real potential users of the app identified the usability issues with the app. Think aloud method helped understand if any parts of the app were creating incorrect impressions on the users while they used the app.

I created a usability test plan and script and setup appointments with my testing participants. I conducted usability tests with 5 users. I gave them a following tasks to perform on the app. 

§  Setup the app for their House and setup them and their partner as parents in the app

§  Mark the previous day’s activities complete for some participants and incomplete for some

§  Search and add an activity to their family calendar, select schedule and add alert during the process

§  Explore the calendar views available on the app and discuss about their usability to the user

All of them could perform the task but certain elements of the design were confusing to some users while not to others. All the observations for the testing were noted in s test report. I modified the app design for the Major and cosmetic issues and left the Minor issues to be addressed later, in the interest of time. A retest with a new set of users helped me confirm that the usability issues were resolved.